the morning after they should sit down with obama for negotiations on real tax reform as recommended by the president's own simpson-bowles commission. broaden the base, lower the rates." and it was one of the things that secretary panetta was talking about, richard, the impact, he said if this goes into effect, it won't be short term, and the ramifications would be deep, steep and devastating. is that a fair assessment, that it would be very hard to turn this around quickly? >> if you have to do all the sequester in a hurry, then yes, it's a real problem because it doesn't let the pentagon begin to plan and distribute, if you will, the cuts. but at the end of the day, whether it's defense spending, education spending, health spending, what always matters more than how much you spend is how you spend it. and so i'm not, at the end of the day, all that worried about how much we spend, whether it's on defense or anything else. you just want to have the time to make some intelligent cuts rather than have to make them literally in a matter of days which would probably mean that readiness